Season Predictions

How many games will a college football team win in the upcoming season? How likely are they to win their conference championship?

This notebook displays 2022 predictions and historical data for Texas.

2022 Schedule

Using each team’s starting rating, I simulate the result and margin of victory for each game of the 2022 season 1000 times.

In each simulation of the season, the (simulated) results of Week 1 update each team’s rating for games in Week 2, and so on. This means that in some simulations a strong team might lose in a big upset early on in the season, which will affect the overall trajectory of their season. Similarly, a weak team might pull off a shocking upset early in the season and boost their rating enough to put together an extended run of victories.

The following table shows the percentage of times in which Texas won each of the games on their upcoming schedule. The margin of victory is the average margin of victory across all simulations.

This visualization displays the same information as above, but this visualization shows the paths of the team’s rating in every simulation for the season. The most pivotal games for the team will tend to be ones where many simulations diverge.

Team Data

The simulations for this upcoming season make use of an (adjusted) Elo rating, which is a rating assigned to each team based on its historical wins and losses.

Elo Rating

The following visualizations shows Texas’s Elo rating from 1900 to present.

Efficiency

In addition to Elo rating, I also make use of a team’s recent offensive/defensive efficiency metrics in simulating games. This section shows how Texas has rated in terms of overall, offensive, and defensive efficiency for each season since 2007. These ratings are computed from an expected points model built on play by play data, so these results are unavailable for years further back than 2007.

For more details on what goes into creating these ratings, go to my description of the expected points model and my methodology for adjusting for opponent quality.

These efficiency ratings indicate a team’s expected points per play when its offense or defense is on the field, adjusted for opponent quality. A team’s overall rating is a combination of its offense and defense ratings, and indicates the net points per play a team would expect when playing an average opponent. The visualization below shows how a team has changed over time as well as their season end efficiency ranking.

Efficiency by Play Type

In addition to examinig how a team performs overall, we can examine each team’s efficiency based on the play type. How has Texas performed when running/passing on offense vs defending the run/pass on defense?

The following visualization shows how Texas’s offense has been in running/passing the ball since 2007.

The following visualization shows how Texas’s offense has been in stopping the opponent’s run/pass.